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I met the Devil the other day, in a dream.
I was lost, looking for my siblings, and found him in an alley, among the boxes. He had fallen there or slept there--I can't remember. He was charming in that way of boys who are up to no good, surprisingly self-deprecating. He was red-faced, red-bodied, black-horned, and was he wearing a suit?

I asked to touch his horns, and he bowed to let me. I considered this a gesture to show him no, I'm not afraid of you. He seem to think it an everyday show of condescension, like he was used to it, like of course girls want to touch his horns, like it would win me over.

I asked him about heaven and hell, of course.

Heaven, he said, was like a never-ending game of make-believe. Everyone had power and everything was possible, but even that would get boring after an eternity. No?

My thought was that the creative would never grow bored. I'd love it.

Hell, I think was more of the same. He pitched it as more fun, if you attached to this world's "fun." He said the kinds of things you would expect a devil to say, like that's not me, that's all you guys and ultimately, God is the one in control. My powers are like a subset of Theirs.

He didn't sway me. I think I told him I was muslim, like I say to scare off missionary. And anyway, I had to get going. I was searching for my family. Wait, he said, me too. We're the same.

I was already moving to explore the California of my dream, but I asked why he was here on Earth and what he hoped to find. Ideas, he said, and smiled weakly like a Hollywood confidence man but I had no sympathy, none at all.

God's likes are equal to ten thousand likes or a hundred thousand whatever it takes to make you happy

God ignores your ex for you

God likes everything your best friend has ever posted online

God gives and takes away

God let your parents spank you and let your mother miscarry after you

God helped you find those family photos in the attic that one time and the memories just came flooding back

God likes how skillfully you describe the innocence of your childhood of social media

God wants you to get that raise

God sees how well you tip

God watches you eat local

God loves how you love animals

God knows the wallet was empty when you found it

God knows you didn't mean to hit her that hard

God believed you first

God let your abuser get off scot-free because it’s good for you

God will have him crash while drunk driving and he will post a selfie from the emergency room but he won't die yet (it will be liver failure)

God knows when you will die of breast cancer, that you will die of breast cancer you are unknowingly attracted to pink ribbon merchandise

God loves you back

God is busy watching sports

God has a favorite team and it’s the same as yours which is the same as your dad's

God wants you to get that energy drink caught in the vending machine it's meant to be yours

God lines up the green lights just perfect for you to catch the bus on that one day for that crucial interview Thank God! you say once for yourself and once to the interviewer

God loves praise

God is like you in that way

God gave you DD boobs but didn’t make you blonde you made yourself blonde and you took selfies at the salon you took selfies at the gym

God loves every face you made

God made Candace blonde

God gave Candace parents that gave her a BMW in high school and a Porsche in college there she goes tagging herself in her family's cabin #ilovemylife

God hates Candace as much you do there is no Fuck You button on Instagram but your fingers are like God's as you ignore her but one day yes one day someday eventually... and you can’t wait until the afterlife

Welcome, melanated ones. We live in a democrative republic, yes?But the Democrats and Republicans do not want us; what now?
Should we return to Monarchy? No, let's keep the equality of all but instead of kings and queens, try reaching into your blood, your past, to discover who you are. Your great grandfather and great great grandmother and their greats were Great, no doubt. And you, descendent must be....

Defenders & Warriors: You who hewed the path, warscarred, fireblooded, loyal. You body was toned, reflective black tendon beautifully tensed and trained. Your Greats and Greats stood shoulder to shoulder, vowed and expired. Your bones remember some betrayal. But also, pure strength: an arrow twang, a spear's thud, the many of a home kept safe, yes, even now.

Healers & Doctors: You know the body, as those before you knew theirs and their lovers. Blood is in your blood, inured against pain. There is magic on your tongue, wise saliva. The Black grey matter from your Greats and Greats, you have been handed, to save.

Givers and Lovers: You are the reason you are here, so great is your empathy. You cannot harm because you hurt when you hurt. You must give care. Your tears grow forest. Your Greats and Greats grew shells and so must you, callouses to save you. Love flows from you, an unbroken chain from the past to whom? You must choose wisely where to give.

Artisans & Crafters: Your Greats and Greats had nimble fingers, birthing hands,
whose children Oppressors and Others might erase. But look! That column, that cake, that carriage! That melody, that road, that garden. That mansion is your mansion. Even unsigned uncredited, it all is yours. Your fingers know as they whittle or carve. Whether they clench clay or marble, it is home.

Thinkers & Teachers: You knew another name for Anamnesis. Some other tongue will unlock the memory of your Greats and Greats, who may have failed to record. They stored their findings in the minds of the young, abstract seedlings passed down and down to you. Whatever is not known to you, you have been made to learn or relearn, but most of all, regive.

Explorers & Heroes: Much of the new doesn't feel so, to your blood. Your Greats and Greats found the whole world, the first world, before. Strangers just repeat. You must go farther, longer, deeper, more; to the moon, the wandering planets, the sun. You will live forever if it saves the day.

Storytellers & Seers: You can see the past if you wish, a closed-eye-view to your Greats & Greats but moreover, you must see beyond. Can't you feel it? In dreams or in songs? Whatever is not given, you envision to make. You must tell others to turn the vision real.

Rebels & Tricksters: You are alive for the same reason as ever: outsmarting someone. Maybe the taxman, maybe death. Maybe Oppressors or Others, you've dodged. They are bigger but you have money in your shoe and butter on your tongue. Your Greats and Greats played cards with the devil to win you skills; be careful! Don't singe yourself when you burn things down, take someone with you against the Way-Things-Are. You are a cool fire, quicksilver or lava.

Muses & Mystics: Everyone watches you. They are hungry, for how you set their lives aflame, ineefable. Inspiration in your lungs, they want to kiss or lap it up, to suck and gain. Your Greats and Greats knew the unknowable. Even god was jealous, let alone man. You will be chased, as they were, but you are forever just beyond and will never be caught.

Guides & Seekers: You carry a torch, never lost. Your brothers and sisters huddle to you, whispering in the darkness, which you do not fear. Your Greats and Greats made peace with darkness, with unknowing and wayfinding. True North is deep in you, stars look like family's faces. Your love of the sun becomes language, it tells you where to go. Or it doesn't, and you blaze the path.

Dancers & Artists: Being is most being to you than anyone. The uncreative life is no life at all. You have the most of it, more and more of it, until it makes your body move. It bleeds out of your fingers, words or colors. Or streams out of your mouth, lyric and rhythm. Your Greats and Great were thought mad, so full of newness and More and Making. You are beauty itself; you are all the above.

You melanted one, are one of many, equal to all and master of a niche that the Greats and Greats carved out for you. And yet, you can choose to change. Give and break and carve something new, for those who come from you someday. Farewell.